Whitburn, Ben (2013) The dissection of paraprofessional support in inclusive education: ‘you're in mainstream with a chaperone’. Australasian Journal of Special Education, 37 (2), 147-161. (doi:10.1017/jse.2013.12).
Abstract
The experiences of young people with disabilities of inclusive schooli ng are largely underresearched. This paper reports recent findings of a small-scale Australian qualitative study, in which secondary student s with vision impairment spoke about their experiences of receiving pa raprofessional support. Two overarching themes emerged from this study : ‘light’ and ‘heavy’ paraprofessional support . The results presented here demonstrate that participants described t hat support personnel upheld the strong arm of the special education t radition, which was manifestly detrimental to their inclusion. Raw dat a is presented to elucidate the emergent themes, and to explain the va rious pedagogical and general support roles of class and special educa tors in eliminating the need for direct paraprofessional presence in l essons. The light and heavy model of support is also examined in terms of how it fits into the complexity of the education discourse and the young people’s own aspirations for full inclusion.
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